The Sun Experience
An Opening to Being
2007/2008
Ron Lampi
I can stand here
—I can stand anywhere—
and simply gaze at the Sun.
And if I stand here long enough,
—if I stand anywhere long enough—,
I know that the origin of all things
I will eventually come to realize
in my gaze at the Sun.
For those of us who are called to be the thinkers of the New Age, an imperative is placed upon us that so few previous thinkers had considered it to be their duty to pursue. A philosophical foundation for the New Age has not yet been accomplished, let alone even attempted. But if we are to provide such a foundation, then we must begin with actual experience, our own experience—what we have experienced for ourselves—, or, lacking such direct experience, thinking from the reported firsthand experience of others. Thinkers naturally abstract from experience, thinking from a generalized being-in-the-world, but not often thinking from experiences that could bring forth new questions. For example, the philosophical tradition has long established its various puzzles and conundrums as readymade academic exercises. But not only that, but thinkers have utterly ignored experiences that are outside the orbit of average everydayness, in particular, those that the New Age movement has come to recognize and focus upon, which are those called under the umbrella term “paranormal.” Such experiences as the UFO or ET encounter, out-of-body, near-death, shamanic, or psychedelic experiences, or other altered, heightened states of consciousness, or psi phenomena, are scarcely philosophically engaged in any original way for a possible new foundation of worldview, or as approaches to a new understanding of Being. The philosophical implications of astrology or other esoteric symbolic systems are also rarely pursued. Philosophical meditation upon symbols is almost a lost art. A Rudolf Steiner who wrote extensively of spiritual realities (however obscure as was the manner of previous metaphysical writing for our taste today) was considered more of an oddball loner in Modernist thought. Postmodern thinkers especially have ignored paranormal experiences as either being not worthy of thought, as they are taken to be merely personal or anecdotal, or of only leading back into old metaphysical speculation. The Modern and Postmodern thrust has been decidedly anti-metaphysical. Many have already announced the death of Western metaphysics. Despite the fact that millions still hold on to their traditional faith, as a society we have come to experience a profound metaphysical disorientation before the cosmos.
The New Age, which implies a new, still emerging spirituality, must then find its philosophical foundations. This implies then a return to metaphysics, but not to the old metaphysics, for we must certainly have passed through the Postmodern baptism by fire by now. We must find our return to metaphysics via a whole range of direct, firsthand experiences, whether they are labeled the ‘paranormal’ or are of the more traditional psychospiritual, mythopoetic, or symbolic kind. In the following I begin from my Sun experience. It will immediately be apparent that the shadow of Heidegger hovers close by; in fact, we will be invoking and confronting Heideggerian themes all along the way. Heidegger himself, however, was typical of so many 20th Century thinkers, especially those moving in the Postmodern direction, especially those who were Postmodernist themselves, in that he could not speak of a “spiritual” or “divine” dimension to human being because he himself did not encounter it in his thinking. He thought valiantly to reveal the meaning of Being, but his later encounter with Being, often criticized as a type of mythopoetic thinking, or as puffing itself up as a sort of prophetic utterance (all criticisms I am self-consciously aware will equally be leveled at my own work), still did not reveal the new dispensation, the new spirituality that would be the new Word, he implied, of Being. He considered his later thinking, however, as exploratory pathways into the Region of a possible new relationship with Being. In the following, we will find our own way to an encounter with Being.
The new dispensation is emerging. We must be courageous in our thinking from all the manifestations of its happening.
*
I am one who has looked into the Sun. My intent in the following is to meditate upon this experience. I will forestall any immediate interpretation of the “Sun” in more traditional intellectual terms, be they philosophical, theological, or psychological, in order to focus first on the Sun as an experience in itself. But certainly I do speak symbolically here, it will be said. Yes, certainly, and I will say some words about that first, but it is truly the Sun in the sky that initiated the experience going back to childhood and that still anchors the experience to this day. I cannot, however, think of the Sun as a mere symbol (in typical Postmodern attitude), but only as a living symbol. It is a living experience.
To be able to think, to meditate, in what might be called the symbolic mode is something of an anachronism in our Postmodern world. How many even understand what is meant? (The word ‘metaphor’ might also be invoked as an “explanation” here. When the concept of metaphor is suggested we will see why it is so inadequate as an explanation, especially as it functions in a Postmodern context.) Who has time to engage a symbol to allow that symbol to speak? How does one even go about doing so? That there might be those of us who can still think with symbols might be considered archaic, or at least a type of anachronistic poetizing. Whatever the general opinion on this might be, we are going to explore, meditate upon, a symbol, a living symbol of my experience—a numinous Image in fact—that has been dominant throughout my entire life. What this will be revealing is an “inner experience.” Quotation marks are used here as an initial nod to the Postmodern perspective that this already is an interpretation within the understanding of subjectivity. But this will become the crux of what we are exploring here. Can a mere “inner experience” open up a new dispensation for the Ages? The larger question before us is whether Postmodern thought can be nudged toward a New Age spiritual perspective. We should like to begin to see that interface. However one might disparage symbolic thought as an archaic manner of thinking in a Postmodern context, perhaps by even calling it mere poetry, the “inner experience” nonetheless cannot be denied. Our position from the beginning, let us be clear, is that experience, no matter how unusual, enigmatic, anomalous, or strange, no matter how “fringe,” will no longer be ignored or denied.
What emerges in the following as an experience is a revealing that is an invitation to interpretation. That is, an invitation for a developed interpretation after the experience is fully laid out. What will be brought into play at various points to help in a more rounded understanding in a Postmodern context rife with interpretations are different registers of more familiar interpretation.
Let us note first of all how Nature can still provide us with living symbols. Living is emphasized because it is not as if we just decide to take anything in Nature, for example, a tree, the Moon, a mountain, or the ocean, and say, Let’s take that as a symbol and meditate upon it. That does not sound to me to be a living, soul-felt experience, but smacks too much of the contemporary workshop mentality. For it is not merely any symbol that we might arbitrarily decide to think upon, but one which has become for us a living symbol, implying a potentially relived experience, again and again. It may very well be that a tree, the Moon, a mountain, or the ocean has become a living symbol for us. Why the Sun (but in my life not only the Sun) had taken on such a status with me will hopefully become apparent. Whether the Sun has a certain symbolic priority among all that Nature might provide us is a possible question for consideration.
It is what I call the Sun experience that I speak of. Even if we would come to call it an “inner” Sun, the Sun, in other words, as an experience of the inner life, the actual Sun in the sky of our daytime was, in my personal history, the origin of the experience. For to the question, What came first, my experience of the Sun in the sky or my “inner” Sun? I would have to reply, the Sun in the sky. I did not yet know in my childhood that I had any such inner experience that I would interpret as Sun-like but only after years of seeing the Sun in the sky, going into my early youth. The Sun in the sky, we can safely assume, is a universal childhood, a universal lifelong human, experience, so ordinary as to hardly deserve any special attention. And yet, how this most everyday occurrence of the Sun in the sky became for me the cipher of a profound inner experience.
Let us note, however, some preliminaries. The Sun creates for us our day; its light illuminates all the landscapes upon Earth. It is the Sun which provides our heat, our energy; it is the engine of all of Earth’s climates; sunlight is one of the fundamental, essential ingredients in the food chain. It is because of the Sun that there is life as we know it on Earth. Everything that goes into making Earth the life-lush planet that it is eventually goes back to the energy of the Sun. We would not be if it were not for the Sun. Yet the Sun is such that we cannot gaze upon it but for only the furtive glance, for it is blinding in its brilliance. The Sun blazing in a summer sky cannot be ignored; it is there, and we know it is there.
In my youth I had what might be considered an unusual love for the Sun. I would readily become transfixed by the Sun: It was as if it were my private God I gazed upon, there, in the sky. I say private, and not straightaway a God or the God (though in a number of poems I did express it that way), since I was well aware that no one else I knew experienced the Sun in the way that I did; I was well aware that contemporary society did not condone such a manner of thinking. It was especially at sunset that I would always linger my gaze upon the Sun. At some point—I would say definitely by my early twenties—I began to experience the Sun within.
I found that I would turn my gaze within and there see—“know” for myself—the Sun within. What was going on for me? What was I actually experiencing? It was an unfolding development, a progressive interiorization of an externally triggering Image (the Sun in the sky), that culminated in the Event. In the early days of experiencing the Sun within that is simply, though, what I saw—a sort of Image of the Sun in my inner mind’s Eye, having such an intensity, however, that it could not be ignored; the Image had something very special about it, it emanated a numinous power. The Sun Image seemed to fix itself there, within.
In those early days, my Sun within was a source of strength: It was perpetually there, however the intensity of it might have fluctuated, and was radiantly inspiring, and so I discovered I could focus on it and be uplifted and encouraged and steadfast in my resolve to be who I am. The inner Sun struck me as being able to burn up and consume the dross, the hurts, the anxieties of everyday life. It provided me a feeling of purification. It was also a point of utter simplicity in the confusing complexities of life. It seemed that I could retreat to the inner Sun and be made whole again by giving myself to its radiance. It was a personal relationship, then, that I developed with the inner Sun. That is to say, a relationship between the I of my ego and this radiant Image. I became fully aware that such a personal relationship was not considered the norm in a Postmodern world.
Now let us go deeper into this experience. I would like to ask myself, What did I actually see? I did call the inner Sun blinding, but I realize that it was not blinding like the Sun in the sky is blinding. When I saw the inner Sun as blinding, it was not as if I could not look upon the Image itself. My “inner Eye” was not hurt as my eyes would be hurt by looking straight at the Sun in the sky. Looking straight at the Sun in the sky can damage the eyes and make the eyes go blind, that is, go dark. When I spoke about being blinded by the inner Sun, curiously it was not that my inner Eye would go dark, but that it was filled by so much “Light” streaming through that Image, that I saw so much, a so much that was a “too much.” The intensity of this “too much” paralyzed my thinking and left me speechless. The “too much” that I saw immediately, then, affected thinking, and in turn, speech. This was my being blinded by the (inner) Sun, for it was my thinking and my speaking that went “dark.” I felt paralyzed in my linguistic ability to express this Sun. I stammered to express this Sun. I felt completely inadequate. My blindness by the Sun meant my inability to speak of its Light. I could surely speak about being blinded by so much Light, but I could not speak of the Light itself. So, from a simple, but powerfully numinous Image that gave me a sense of inner strength, a living symbol developed that produced an Event of “too much.” The “too much” so often grew in intensity.
Strangely enough, the “inner” Sun did not always necessarily appear to look like the Sun in the visual field of my inner Eye. What was there in its Sun-likeness was an intensity, an intensity of such focus that it often seemed to rivet my whole body. It was an intensity that gave all the impression of multiplying itself exponentially—it appeared to be unlimited.
The Light was there but I could not reveal it in order to share it. The Light was always “too much.” It was too much first in the sense that the Light had an energetic intensity, it focused psychic energy (in the depth psychological sense), and also that it radiated in all directions. With Light, one can see. It was therefore an overwhelming seeing of Light emanating in all directions simultaneously, in the Now.
It was an immediate apprehension, direct insight, of Light. But this was insight magnified a thousand times—Insight with a capital “I” that merges with what it sees, the full-on impact of the Sun. It merges and therefore cannot be spoken. This revelation was the “too much.” The Sun radiated such a Light with such brilliance, with such an intensity, that it was overwhelming. This was the psychic impact then, this experiencing of an intensity of Fire, a brilliant Light, without end. This is what was impossible to convey. My easy-going persona could give no adequate indication of what I was experiencing within. So intense was this Fire within, an intensity upon intensity, that the ego can almost not stand it, the ego is overwhelmed, the mind is blasted, as it were, flooded at times by such an ocean of Lightthat all that can be seen is Light. It became for me the realization that entire lifetimes would be necessary to bring into the world what such a Sun reveals.
It is now that we must ask more philosophically, What was this Light? What was I being shown? What was I being shown that was so overwhelming? What was it that might be brought into the world? Well, certainly I speak metaphorically by “Light,” one might say. Certainly, in an initial, surface-level sense, but I do think that metaphor, in a Postmodern context, is a rather weak and timid word to use here. It is not often thought that a metaphor, as it is used for example in literary style, can be overwhelming and can paralyze one’s thinking. Certainly I was not using the “inner Sun” as simply a figure of speech. That is why I refer to it as a living symbol.
It might be suggested that what I was experiencing was only a feeling, however an intense and oceanic feeling at that. In other words, an auto-affect produced by the brain’s biochemistry. That is a common simplistic reductionism in today’s Postmodern context. But this was not simply a “high” as we find produced by a mind-altering substance that produces a possible range of thoughts and images. The feeling aspect was there, yes, (what can only be called ecstasy or rapture) as we are always in a state of feeling or mood as a mode of our existential structure, but what would be totally ignored here is the living symbol of the Sun. It was not some random, unfocused, free-floating mix of thoughts and feeling I was experiencing. No, it was as a result of the inner Image, one which had meaning, however that meaning appeared at first to be ecstatically unspeakable. This is now in fact what “Light” is beginning to point to—meaning. Logos, as the possible words that would convey what was being shown, was apparently not adequate, however, to what was being shown.
Let us again consider the Sun. The Sun is radiant with an unimaginable intensity of energy, energy that is able to make extraordinary things happen, e.g. the enormous richness of life on Earth. The Sun therefore, we would say, has an enormous, almost unbelievable potential that is energy. I realize then that what I was experiencing as “Light” was first the revelation of potential. With my inner Eye I was seeing the opening up of an enormous potential, a potential that struck me as an Unlimited Potential. Now this was not an Unlimited Potential of sheer physical energy (like the Sun), or of raw force or power (as physics might measure), that would have no existential meaning, but was, I realize, an Unlimited Potential for me, as a human being. What, then, was this Unlimited Potential? Yet, first, how is it that I can say it was unlimited? It was unlimited in the sense that I could see (see as insight) no limit to it, no boundary, there was no sense that beings-in-totality could limit it, so it was therefore a transcendent seeing. Such a seeing into the outside of the everydayness of human existence reveals the spiritual Abstract. (The A is capitalized to indicate an abstract state of mind, not an abstract word or notion.) As a seeing of Light, we often refer to spiritual illumination.
An Unlimited Potential for what? we ask. Light, which allows us a seeing, is a conveying of meaning. What I was seeing therefore was an Unlimited Potential-for-coming-into-meaning. We will hyphenate the phrase to indicate that this is a unitary process—the potential is such that it is a constantly showing that it is coming-into-meaning. We will shorten the phrase, though, to an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning. Revealed in this Unlimited Potential was an overwhelming multitude of possibilities-of-meaning, unending, unlimited possibilities-of-meaning. These possibilities were as if Light radiating in all directions.
The intensity which I experienced then, in the midst of an intensity of feeling, the intensity which was the too much “Light,” was an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning—a potential-for-meaning, and so therefore I could not express what was not yet determinable. It was a potential-for-meaning that was a not-yet to be spoken. Was it that my logos ability was inadequate? Or was logos itself inadequate to such a Revelation?
By an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning or possibilities-of-meaning, we could also speak of an Unlimited Potential-for-coming-into-form, or an Unlimited Potential-for-form. This but hints of the most intimate connection between meaning and form. It is meaning, however, that I will emphasize, because it is meaning which allows logos to speak, to put itself into an articulated form—words—, which in turn allows me to convey meaningfully. The emphasis that I will place upon meaning as we continue also points to something significant about the ontological status of the Sun experience—it not only implies that it is a spiritual experience, but, conversely, implies something about spiritual experience. Spiritual experience is one filled with an explosion of meaning, however that meaning might be so very highly abstract, so abstract as to be just beyond what language can convey. This is what contrasts it to the recent suggestions, which are not exactly clear, that the new physics of the quantum level is somehow similar or even equivalent to spiritual or mystical experience. There are those who want to say that Spirit and the quantum level do somehow correspond. Now there may very well be an ontological correspondence of the quantum level mirroring the spiritual especially when we next consider my realization of Interconnectedness, but it is most important to keep in mind that whereas the quantum level on its level might indeed have meaning (after all, theoretical physics finds meaning in it in order to talk about it at all), it is not, however, a Revelation of an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning such as Spirit illuminates. In other words, in another register, if the quantum level might reveal a level of mind, it is still—as far as our understanding of quantum reality goes today—not the super-consciousness of Spirit. But we are getting far ahead of ourselves here, for the whole notion of Spirit has yet to be explicated (which we will not be able to pursue here).
Picking up, then, from our earlier paragraph, Light radiating in all directions as a plenum I realize next revealed to me an Interconnectedness, for the rays of Light were as Threads moving out in all directions weaving an entire Web. The light of the Sun which shines on all landscapes and reveals all landscapes we could say weaves an entire scene for our eyes. The inner Sun revealed then an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning. We might call it a Web of all things. The implication here can hardly be more blinding. The inner experience of this, and not simply its abstract statement, is, as I conveyed earlier, an intensity upon intensity.
These two interrelated interpretations of the inner Sun—Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning—was the first phase of my Moment of Vision, which is what can be referred to as the Event. This first phase, however, is still on the level of the purely Abstract. But it is clear that it is not simply an abstract “idea in the head,” but a highly abstract experience—the spiritual Abstract. It is characteristic of spiritual experiences that they are highly abstract like this—again, just beyond the limit of what logos can convey.
Now a clever Postmodernist might state that this, then, is “merely” an interpretation. The good Postmodernist is always quick to point out how we are always thinking from an interpretive context. But we are all Postmodern today in this regard—of course it is an interpretation, human reality is based on a constant interpretive stance. We are always being-in an active understanding that is continuously interpreting everything we encounter. But what would be entirely missed here is that I, the ego-self, could not interpret my experience for the longest time—I spoke of the inner Sun, but more than that, I was “blind.” The interpretation eventually came to reveal itself. What we might ask then is why the interpretation of the Sun experience should be an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning. Why, for example, should the interpretation not simply be the word ‘God’? To answer that question adequately would require deconstructing the entire self-world of an individual embedded in the contemporary Postmodern world.
Another observation to be made here is the common Postmodern fear of making existential interpretations. This fear is rarely if ever made conscious, but is expressed rather as an arrogance of the ego-self. The contemporary Postmodern ego-self conducts itself as a little god “too good” to be called by the summons of an interpretation that might challenge its freedom to do as it pleases. The contemporary Postmodern ego-self wants to be free of any interpretation that might call it to a particular Path. Yes, the ego-self wants to be free to dish out interpretations as merely passing abstract, titillating ideas, but then wants to be free to utterly dismiss them, because it wants to be its own little god. The irony is that the contemporary ego-self is totally enmeshed in a materialistic, money-driven, mass consumer, mass media conditioned human reality. Its little godhood allows it the (illusory) freedom to choose when and what to buy, what TV channel to watch, perhaps what career to pursue, and all the hundred and one little mundane gratifications that fill contemporary life. The ego-self has so identified with its conditioning that it resists any interpretation that might challenge or upset its “comfort zone.” An interpretation that might open it to what is outside its reality-world it will consider irrelevant. But is there an underlying anxiety that something more to existence might be possible?
Engaging Heidegger here, it was perhaps the case that what I experienced was my own Dasein (existence), in his usage of the word. I was perhaps experiencing the possibilities of my own existence, which is fundamental to human being in our existential structure. Now since possible ways for us to-be is fundamental to being human, my experiencing of possible ways-to-be is what I, or anyone, experiences continuously. Would the intensity of the Sun experience be necessary for what I as a human being experience all the time? Perhaps, however, I was experiencing my Dasein as-such (Dasein now considered as the Open—the ec-stasis of Being) in a highly conscious, ecstatic encounter. This is not the complete answer here, but it is moving in the right direction. It was not, however, because of any contemplation of death, as Heidegger was led to in his analysis of Dasein, that provided for my Moment of Vision, but a whole other encounter that began precisely as the Sun experience, going back to childhood. We can see why Heidegger himself shifted his focus away from death and the whole Dasein-analysis project of Being and Time (and why part 2 was never published, as he himself said) as it was not going to provide the even more fundamental insight that he was actually aiming for, which was a more profound encounter with Being. Contemplation of death, according to the Heidegger of Being and Time, revealed a Moment of Vision for a particular Dasein for its particular life project so that it thereby comes into its own authenticity—but this, we must realize, may or may not in fact happen, and probably only rarely is such a contemplation of death sufficient to reveal and secure such a life orientation. The Moment of Vision upon contemplation of death was a rupture in the they-self (das Man) of the inauthenticity of everydayness. Such a contemplation of death did not, however, necessarily reveal the Opening of Being, which is what Heidegger had to have come to realize.
We must inquire more deeply about this Moment of Vision which is the Event. First, by Event, let us not think that this was a one time occurrence, a particular moment that could have been timed by a clock on a particular day. Event here must be taken as a dynamic encounter that is potentially always there, potentially always available to the inner Eye; it allows what is to happen (as a whole new shift in our world) to happen. This is an Event (from another register) of a psychospiritual nature (which we would need at some point to explicate further). The intensity of it may come and go (and this might readily depend upon personal psychological factors), but the Event, which was for me this Revelation of Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning, is a capturing of human being, of one’s existence. I was thereby permanently captured by it.
I could not immediately interpret the Event, however, even as Unlimited Potential or Interconnectedness, at first. I could find no words that could explain it and then set it aside as something already accomplished and taken care of, so that I could get on with my life as a contemporary conditioned human being. It was a permanent rupture in my world, an Opening that was offering an immense opening out. Human reality, the epistemologically-defined reality that we are utterly bounded by as human beings, as if we live inside a collective bubble, (‘human reality’ I take here to be a philosophical term requiring further explication)—it is all, for one, that Heidegger meant by being-in-the-world—had an edge, beyond which was an abyss.
An opening out that implies a revealing, a coming toward of something being shown, must first be an Event of Opening that allows what is to be shown, what is to be seen, to be shown. For the possible to be shown as possible there must be an Opening through which that seeing of possibility comes, an Opening through which it is given, and by which it can be seen. Something other than what is always already a totally self-referential, conditioned human reality was shown to me as possible. In another register we realize again that this is called spiritual illumination.
Since this Opening opened for my existence (Dasein), this was an Opening, then, to Being, of Being. It was the Opening of Being revealing Itself as an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning. Being revealed Itself through its Opening. What must become apparent here is that we have not only discovered the Opening of Being that Heidegger brought to our attention, but the Opening is today an ongoing destined revealing, a Revelation of a new Word of Being coming-to-us that Heidegger, after all his exploratory thinking, could only have anticipated. We are no longer standing at the Edge looking behind us at the history of metaphysics and the entire West, proclaiming, as he did, the end of philosophy, and then looking before us contemplating an Abyss, anticipating what might come; we are, yes, standing at the Edge, but we are now living in our Moment of Vision—new Revelation has been given. Its further unfolding will only be hinted at as we conclude here.
It might be asked here why Being is invoked. Why is ‘Being’ the word here? Are we not talking about an event occurring within mere subjectivity? We initially referred to inner experience within quotation marks. But what is meant by “inner experience” as subjectivity? Why should it be assumed as something simply given and immediately understood? What is immediately given, however, not implying thereby that we explicitly understand it, yet we do as through a glass darkly experience it, what we are thrown all the way back to, what we are thrown against, when there is no metaphysical ground upon which to stand but our standing at the Edge (our Postmodern condition), is Being.
Is it perhaps assumed, however, that we are cut off from Being? Why should we come to assume that? What, in fact, is meant by ‘cut off’? To be cut off from Being still implies first of all Being that we are cut off from. In other words, we still make reference to Being, as if we do know something about it, and must then explain why we are cut off from it. But how can we know this “something” about Being if we are cut off from it? Being cut off from Being still also implies a relationship to Being, even if it denotes a lack. Can we assume that we are utterly cut off from Being if Being has any meaning at all? If Being has any meaning at all, then we cannot be utterly cut off from it, since, again, such meaning would have a relationship to it. Once we accept that Being is more than a mere word, then a whole complex of implications result. But here, then, is the whole crux of our meditation, isn’t it?
Is Being a mere word? Perhaps not a mere word, but a master word operating in a language game from which we cannot escape. Are we therefore invoking a nostalgia for the past of metaphysics? For perhaps a theological Other? To suggest these things is certainly a Postmodern position. To fully address this Postmodern position would lead us too far afield, however, for my intent here. But just as we considered that the Sun is a living symbol, so, too, the word ‘Being’ is a cipher that is the supreme challenge for thinking to ponder. Is the claim then that language is no longer seen as being capable of opening us to what is beyond human—beyond human reality? It is not simply the word ‘Being’ that is at issue then, but language as a whole.
Our position is that of an engagement with what has become for us an Event for our thinking.
The Opening—as we saw that the Sun as symbol in fact first does reveal—is not any opening on a level within the realm of beings (however, an actual geographical place might provide an experience of the Edge), but is an Opening in the midst of beings-in-totality: it is an Opening for my existence, as a human being. Because I can think beings-in-totality, I can also think of a beyond beings-in-totality, but, then, not only that, not only that by far is that I can experience firsthand for myself that beyond. As an Event of the inner life, it is an Opening of a psychospiritual nature, witnessed by the I of ego. But the Opening is not thereby any particular mental contents; rather, this is an Opening in the midst of mental contents that allows for the revealing of the new, for what must be considered as novelty in human psychospiritual evolution. We can say that the Opening, as it is a process, is always a revealing of what is coming into the world.
We might suggest that a human being is always in the Open (by Heideggerian definition), as Dasein is always open to possibilities, as possible ways-to-be. Possibilities are projected before us as the future (as a function of human temporality) at every moment that we are conscious. (The basic challenge of any spiritual meditation is to be able to put the brakes on this constant projecting of projects—part of the “monkey chatter” of the mind, which is our everydayness.) This does not mean that we are normally conscious of them as possibilities, for we go about our various daily projects by simply identifying and merging with them and acting them out. The possibilities projected are therefore particular, concrete possibilities as we go about our day-to-day life. Though such possibilities are in the Open so that they can be seen, the Open as-such is not seen, let alone the Open as an Opening. To encounter the Opening of Being is to (potentially) experience it as an Event of a collective nature (an emerging Zeitgeist) that is opening out the potential-for-meaning of a new moment, of a new stage, in the human Story. It is here that we can begin to speak of an evolutionary dispensation, and what today we call a New Age. Here, again, we see the function of futurity, that human reality is a constant projecting into the future.
Opening means where world is not, it is where human reality has a rupture, an Edge. At the Edge of our world (worldhood) is the Opening, the clearing in the midst of world (our entire interpreted and conditioned, self-referential being-in-the-world) where (new) Light can be revealed. To dwell in one’s daily life aware of the Opening is to define it as an Event of Being. This is the destined interface between Being and human being.
We might encounter another objection here. It might be argued that there is no such Opening, there is no inner experience that is not already totally conditioned and interpreted. There is no “inner place” that is not-world, that is merely a potential-for-meaning, let alone an Unlimited Potential-for-meaning. Human reality is utterly bounded and filled by interpretation. There is nothing that comes-to-it from outside of it. Conventional science will tell us that there is no evidence of any Greater Reality breaking into our bubble. That is, there is nothing that is not immediately grasped by human cognitive representation. Certainly there is plenty more to know about Nature—science always continues to learn more about Nature—but this knowing is always within the pre-set framework of human conceptual representation. Now this objection brings before us exactly where our firsthand experience must be defended. It can only bring me back to the Sun experience—how is such an experience to be interpreted? The denial of the Opening is in fact an implicit denial of creativity per se, but for us, here, especially, it is a denial of creativity in the most profound sense—of the possibility of evolutionary novelty (of a spiritual nature) coming into the world.
The paranormal also is exactly that which finds no readymade, sufficient interpretation, for the paranormal is not conditioned by human sociocultural, economic codifications. The UFO, as an example of a paranormal phenomenon, most definitely does break into human reality. Higher or altered states of consciousness have not been fully absorbed into human reality as to be completely interpreted, though “higher” and “altered” are interpretations that do frame them within human discourse, and long spiritual and hermetic Traditions have of course interpreted them symbolically within their systems. However, in a Postmodern context, we are aware that the Traditions are assumed to have been voided. The fact that the Traditions can no longer be accepted, at least at face value, is a result of Modern and Postmodern critique. The Traditions speak the language of the old metaphysics. Our purpose is to win back the Opening to that which is “outside” human reality, outside the horizon of our human bubble. To say that there is no “outside” to human reality is to suggest that human reality would claim all of Being. (Again, the UFO certainly has the ability to slip in and out of human reality.) To make such a claim would not only be presumptuous but would be a supreme example of the hubris of the human ego’s will to power (its little godhood) and its delusion that it can claim everything for itself.
If we would meditate upon the Opening, we would find a three-fold dynamic. First we must consider the Opening as-such. This is truly the supreme Mystery, that Being opens out an Opening in the midst of all-that-is in the world time flow through which It reveals Itself. Let us ask a naïve question, for someone will certainly in jest pose it, and it will provide a pivot for better understanding about the Opening. The question, How big is the Opening? certainly misunderstands the Opening in a literal, material sense. We must realize that the Opening is an ongoing process that allows what is to enter the world to in fact manifest in the world. It is a process that weaves into the world’s own time flow. The Opening spans the human and Being. The Opening is the relationship between human being and Being in which both are not only necessary for the relationship but human being (in a collective sense) is open (conscious) to its own potential—to its own future—by standing in the Opening of Being. We might say that from the human perspective, the Opening is actually more primary than Being as-such, because it is only through the Opening that Being opens for us that we come to have any notion of Being whatsoever. Our essence, which is always the showing to us of our potential, is to be open, allowing us to transcend all finite things and conditions, and to bring into play what is destined—what Being opens out to us.
The Opening allows a revealing. What is revealing is Being, but can we claim to say that Being as-such is revealed, or is it what Being reveals of Itself? What Being has revealed of Itself is what thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition have posited to be Being. This positing of what Being has revealed as Being, yet forgetting at the same time Being as-such, has determined the whole history of western metaphysics. The question is, how do we know that Being reveals Itself as such-and-such, and yet has concealed Itself as-such? First, by the very fact of that history—that individual thinkers and sages have glimpsed something of Being but in each case it is never the last word. It has become apparent in our evolution that we, as human being in our human reality, are not getting the complete picture, that we do live in an Illusion, however Real (this physical reality of ours) of an Illusion it is. Experientially, we are aware that we are not getting the complete picture by way of paranormal experience and altered states of consciousness. But, then, even more fundamental than that is the reality of novelty, of creativity, on an evolutionary scale—that is to say, what is destined to be always unfolding into human reality.
Those who consider themselves fundamentalist of one of the various Traditions so often believe that they have got the complete picture. For them, the Opening as-such is closed off. They may be open to “God,” but this being “open to” is totally framed within a traditional mythos—it is already fully interpreted. To those who might say that our interpretation also takes place in a total framework, we can only say that that is correct—are we not thinking from the Edge of a Postmodern world? Or would one again deny that there is such an Edge as the Opening?
Even if we were to say that what is revealed is Unlimited Potential, that is an interpretation in which we participate (as always already thinking within the horizon of human understanding) with what is being revealed. We participate by the very fact of our offering an interpretation. Being equally conceals, however, what we, as human beings, at our stage of evolution, are not yet capable of comprehending and therefore bringing into language.
There is thirdly in the three-fold dynamic of the Opening what-is-revealed. What-is-revealed from the Opening is Being, but Being as revealed, as It simultaneously conceals Itself as-such. What-is-revealed itself has a dual dynamic (taking what-is-revealed as a primal totality): What-is-revealed as what cannot be spoken (the full-on brilliance of the Sun) because it is “too much” at the time for human cognition, and what-is-revealed as that which is destined to-be-revealed-as-what-can-be-spoken. Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning is a first-level interpretation (the pure Abstract) of what could not be spoken. What-can-be-spoken we then consider as the (possible) new thought, new idea, even the new, revolutionary idea, the new paradigm. Since our orientation here is human reality in its entirety, implying on the scale of World Ages, we can refer then to the new Word, that which is appropriated as a new dispensation (of the Ages).
The Opening in its primordial revealing is an opening out. It was a showing to me of omnidirectional “Unlimited Light”—which I have come to interpret as Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning. It is the Event of Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning coming into human reality. Again, to fully appreciate what this is as a revealing is almost too much to contemplate; it is blinding. What can bring into the world, what can manifest in Form, what can even attempt to equal, such a Revelation? What might this new Word be that could begin to speak of such a Revelation? (In another exploration we will realize that here is the foundation for the notion of super-creativity.)
I experienced the inability to speak, first, because this opening out of the Opening was overwhelming for the ego to process; it was not only a “too much,” but there was also “nothing,” no thing, no object, no beings-in-totality, to speak about. The Nothing was the Opening as pure Unlimited Potential—what has also been called in another register the Void, which is not a mere emptiness, but the opening out Revelation of Being as an “Unlimited Light.”
Logos is traditionally the word which reveals for human reality through language what-is-shown—in fact, the threads of words that at first come as thought directly from insight. When we have seen for ourselves (insight that is gnosis), when we speak logos directly from what-is-revealed to us, we are then our own authority. In an everyday sense, every time we speak, we speak as the authority of our own being a subject, an ego. The Modern into Postmodern outcome of the evolution of the Cartesian ego had liberated it as a source of authority, my own unlimited potential (relatively) of expressing ego-self (referred to earlier as our little godhood). But this seemingly unlimited potential for expressing ego-self pales by far before the Unlimited Potential that is now being revealed by Being. The Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning is itself revealing another whole ontological level of Self—a multidimensional Self, the Higher Self. The seeing of this is true Gnosis—it is the further expanded Moment of Vision. Is logos capable of conveying this new Word of the Higher Self, which would then have to be considered capital ‘L’ Logos?
Logos, unable to speak of a revealing that as of yet lacked the words, must then await the Word. Is it that any word will do? No, but a Word adequate and appropriate to what is being shown. It is the Word destined to come into the world. Tradition will claim that this Word is that which has already been revealed—the Lord, Yahweh, God, Allah, Christ, Atman, Krishna, whatever Word that had claim to reveal the ultimate meaning of existence for us human beings. All such Words offered by the various Traditions come to us with a huge cultural background. We must, however, leave these complex, historically-laden Words aside for our purpose here. With ‘God,’ for example, the whole issue of faith, and belief in God, is raised. Our immediate concern here must set faith aside; we speak here of a direct apprehension, the firsthand experience of an encounter that is an Event. (Faith—but a new type of Reality attunement for faith—will undoubtedly become engaged once the Word is given.) We will call this Event, after Heidegger, the Event of Appropriation, when the Word is revealed, that is, able to be spoken, that is the appropriation of what-is-being-revealed. We bring Revelation into ourselves and make it our own that we might come into our own (realizing the next stage of our evolution—the New Age). Human being—a human being—must be prepared to speak this Word that adequately appropriates what-is-being-revealed. The traditional Western Logos represented by Christianity and modern science, I will claim, is no longer adequate to speak this Word.
We can speak about possibility as an abstract possibility, that is, where we entertain a possibility as merely an idea. However, when it is the Word that is spoken of, we must speak of a definitive global possibility, one that is the destined Appropriation between Being and human being in a concrete historical context. We must see the Word then as a further step-down translation of the blinding intensity of Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an overwhelming Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning. Such a locution ‘Unlimited Potential-for-meaning opening out an Interconnectedness-of-all-meaning’ we saw was the first step in the stepping down into human consciousness, into language, of the Revelation. We might call the aspect of Unlimited Potential the ushering forth of the Word and the aspect of Interconnectedness as the immediate—that is, still purely Abstract—unpacking of the Word. The Word granted is a psychospiritual transformer—it transforms Being-as-revealed into language in such a way that it is transformative of human reality per se, in potentially all cultural forms, as it makes its way throughout human reality. It puts into play, to put it simply, new game rules of our reality-world. This Word, for reasons we will explore in another work, we will call The Mythos. The Mythos is the Word come-to-us of Being for the New Age. It is the poet who is among the first to be called to speak this Word. Our whole meditation here on the Sun experience has been an attempt to provide a philosophical foundation for the early speaking of The Mythos. Why Mythos is invoked here—and Mythos rather than Logos—will require that other exploration. We will find that The Mythos itself is announcing through the poet a new divine name, the new Divinity of human being that is the dispensation of a New Age. This Divinity is the name Psyche. This is the Moment of Vision, my Moment of Vision as the poet, in its further determinant Form—the Vision of Psyche. It is the Vision of Psyche, the Living Image of the Higher Self (our Divinity), which is the Revelation that The Mythos is the telling of.
The Event of Appropriation is therefore an Advent—it is the coming and arrival of a new Word The Mythos, the manifestation into human reality of our Divinity, Psyche. If one were to suggest that The Mythos was already announcing itself in my childhood experience of the Sun (my childhood’s secret life), it is then that we must speak of destiny.
The Mythos begins somewhere
and must begin with someone
September 2007/March 2008